Expression of Drosophila glass protein and evidence for negative regulation of its activity in non-neuronal cells by another DNA-binding protein.

The glass gene encodes a DNA-binding zinc-finger protein required for the development of Drosophila photoreceptor cells and which appears to regulate a number of genes specifically expressed in photoreceptors. We have generated monoclonal antibodies to Glass and used them to examine Glass distribution during development. Glass is expressed in all cell types of the developing eye and in all other organs that contain photoreceptor cells in Drosophila, including a small number of cells in the brain. We altered the normal pattern of glass expression by placing the gene under the control of the hsp70 promoter. Our results suggest that nonphotoreceptor cells are restricted in their response to Glass expression. In an effort to discover the mechanism of this restriction, we examined the expression of a number of reporter gene constructs. Our results suggest that nonsensory cells are unable to express certain reporter constructs in response to Glass expression because another DNA-binding factor represses Glass activity in nonsensory cells.